Archives for category: Accountability
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Is Killing Off Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada (Clark County). She frequently sends letters to every legislator in the state about the need to fund schools like hers adequately and the dismal failure of charter schools.

She responded to a post that featured an interview with Jennifer Berkshire, who predicted that some states would phase out public schools in the next few years.

Sullivan responded:

There would have been a time I would have said this will never happen. Public Schools are such an American Insitution. They are protected by laws.

Now I know charter schools are built to go around the laws. Our Nevada Constitution states one district one county. But charters claim they are not a district. And when necessary they are not even a school. The beauty of the EMO/CMO makes them slippery too. They are often a combination for-profit/non-profit. What law can apply to all of the above: a non-profit education.business, managed by a for-profit management corporation which can then also take advantage of all public school resources and tax advantages, while also applying for all the small business grants and money.

Nevada never got the immediate overnight conversion Elaine Wynn and her reformers wanted. That was too quick and shocking. The ASD grabbing 30 schools at a time did not work. [Elaine Wynn is chair of the state Board of Education and wife of a major casino owner.]

So neoliberals have settled for a slow and steady 5 or 6 charters a year. Along with adding to charter chains by grade level every year – 100 students here and 100 students there.

Jana Wilcox-Lavin uses the $22 million in grant money to grease wheels and find favor. Rebecca Feiden is one of the most powerful women in the state. She grants charters; She refuses charters. Rebecca gives some chance after chance after chance to start their charter business. Others, she stops dead in their tracks. They both inherited a dysfunctional and failing charter business. The Charter Authority is still mired in failing charters – failing financially, failing academically, and failing to enroll diversity. Charters in Nevada are obvious segregation and white flight. There is limited appetite to serve poor students.

Mayors in Clark County seem to think running a school is easy. The pandemic allowed them to use education money to offer micro-charters. This seems to have whet some appetites to own a district of their own.

Mayor Goodman of the City of Las Vegas wants a charter. For some unknown reason she paired up with the EMO TNTP (Michelle Rhee’s Group). She signed on the who’s who of education reform. The City of Las Vegas is now in the school business. Interestingly enough Mayor Goodman was successful at running an expensive private school. She does know education. She has zero experience running a school for diverse poor students. She is about to get a wake-up call. Cedric Creer was only voice of reason when this was discussed. He has the failing Agassi, Rainbow, and 100 Academies in his area – he warned the City Council not to go into the school business. Those charters have had few successes and much more failure. Turnover is constant both teachers and students. Mayor Goodman is about to learn that loads of donations and cash from the City of Las Vegas will not be enough if you let Michelle Rhee’s teaching hating group abuse labor. Interestingly enough, Goodman will retire and the City Council will then run this charter school.

Things I did not think were possible.

Are happening.

I thought our straight forward laws would prevent the Mayors from owning a district through their City Councils.. But charters are not in “districts”. Nor are they schools. Nor are they businesses. They become whatever they need to be to skirt the rules the rest of us live by daily. They claim it is “innovation”. Grifters do it everyday. I do not find it new.

I watched Rebecca Feiden define EMO/CMO very differently to the Nevada Legislature the other day – than she has ever defined it is a Charter Authority Meeting. Perhaps she does not even know or want to know. She was certainly snippy like legislators should already know.

I think this year, The Nevada State Public Charter School Authority will become the second largest district (yes, I know they claim they are not one, but they act like one) in Nevada. It is the size of the Reno/Washoe School District almost. And it serves mainly rich white students inside the middle of Clark County. Yes I know it has a hand full of diverse charters – those are not the norm. Yes I know there are charters in other counties. The bulk of the Nevada charters are serving rich white students inside CCSD. Creating a systematic segregation in Clark County. White Flight is obvious.

Charters segregate by religion, race, and money. They are actually tracking special education, language learning, and free and reduce lunch because those categories earn businesses more pupil center funding dollars. This tracking does not help with Mormon charters, all black or all white charters, and charter locations which are obviously limiting access.

Rebecca Feiden is focused on trying to get more free and reduced lunch children into charters. The Charter Authority is sending the charters a letter, inviting them to participate in “Weighted Lotteries” to help correct their diversity issues. All the charters are getting a “Weighted Lottery” and the Charter Authority is claiming this is a tool to diversify. Weighted Lotteries do not help at all. Especially with new charter enrollment which required diversity by law. Weighted Lotteries only go into affect if charters are full. Technically if a charter has even one spot open – the lottery is not triggered.

The irony of all this is not lost on me. CCSD is one of the most diverse districts in the United States. Yet our Nevada Charters which are predominantly EMO’d For-Profit Academica – serve the rich and white. Now Nevada Charters are spending money to attract diversity to their charters – advertising, flyers, walking door-to-door, or so they claim they tried to find a diverse child to enroll. The Tax Payer has to pay these businesses to admit a few IEP, language learners or poor children. For some perspective, my public school is 100% diverse on every and all levels – we do not try at all to add diversity. In fact

Nevada never closes a failing charter. Even charters that cannot fill out the application or meet the requirements just sue until they are finally allowed to do whatever they want. There is not remedy to stop this. $950 million in Nevada Charters and not a single soul can tell you where it is or what it was spent on.

This is why I think Jennifer Berkshire is correct. Eventually, there will be no place called public schools. There will be a selection list and rich people will be able to pay to have a teacher and school. Others will accept cash and their children will not receive anything and that will be fine because it is their “choice”. And most will meet in a charter warehouse somewhere to sit in front of a device with software teaching them. The poor will be used to privatized and receive the lesser quality of the lists.

It will be slow. CCSD has a parasite. At this rate, the Charter Authority will just keep growing and making more messes which use up more education dollars. It takes from some to give to others. And folx are just fine with allowing a corporation take everything from the disadvantaged so their own children can get ahead. The so called “progressives” are leading the charge.

It is wrong and I hope we fight it. I believe in our imperfect public schools. I see nothing the charters offer that is new. I do not see them being a remedy at all. There is some limited liability advantages for businesses – is that good use of tax dollars?

I hope I am wrong.

Logically I am just afraid Jennifer Berkshire is right.

She followed up with another comment:

Sadly CCSD and Nevada “Leadership” are TFA. They are here to stay. Having catapaulted themselves above everyone.

An example is the very powerful Rebecca Feiden who control $950 million in Nevada Education Dollars which go to Nevada Charters.

Another is Jana Wilcox-Lavin in Opportunity 180 which spreads charters and gives “grants” to them.

No one wants to be a teacher – seems there will always be an appetite to make six figures and control everyone and everything for an eduphilantrophist like Elaine Wynn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Nevada, Privatization

Newark: Black Students Walk Out of North Star Charter to Protest Mistreatment

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2022 //
24

On Friday, a large continent of Black students walked out of North Star Academy, a high-scoring no-excuses charter school in Newark, New Jersey. The students were protesting the mistreatment of Black students and teachers.

Chalkbeat reports:

Hundreds of students walked out of a Newark charter school and rallied outside City Hall on Friday to call attention to what students said is the frequent mistreatment of Black students and faculty.

Around 9 a.m., students began streaming out of the Lincoln Park High School campus of North Star Academy, which is New Jersey’s largest charter school operator with more than 6,000 students in Newark and Camden. After marching from the Central Ward campus to nearby City Hall, student organizers and a former teacher gave speeches about a culture of anti-Blackness they said pervades the school, while scores of students cheered and waved signs.

“We’re tired and we’ve been fed up,” 12th grader Kwadjo Otoo called out from the steps of the historic building, adding that some Black teachers and students continue to feel disrespected despite efforts by the charter operator’s leadership to address complaintsabout the schools. “Now they’re trying to pretend like something changed, but we know it’s the same school we’ve been going to forever now.”

Several students said multiple Black teachers over the years have left the school, which the students said is because the teachers felt overworked and undervalued. When well-liked Black teachers depart, their absence can leave students feeling isolated, they said.

“It’s very upsetting for us to build bonds with our teachers, to build relationships and connect,” said L. Drummond, a senior at the Lincoln Park campus, “and then see them chased out by the school.”

The school went into lockdown during the protest, and students who left were not allowed back in after they returned from City Hall. Locked out of school, the students began to disperse around 10:30 a.m.; some said they planned to walk home while others set out for a different North Star campus downtown.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Disruption, Education Industry, Newark, Racism, Resistance, Students

BBC News: The Wounded. Children of Putin’s War

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2022 //
24

This story appears on Apple News, taken from the BBC News site. Google it on the BBC site and watch the video if you can. I couldn’t. Anyone who blames the Ukrainians for this cruel war is insane. The attack on Ukraine was completely unprovoked. The Russian forces are now engaged in reducing the city of Mariupol to rubble. 90% of its buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of women and children are buried in the rubble of a theater where they were sheltering. Hundreds more are buried under an arts school. And the world watched in horror.

In his hospital bed, little Artem stares into space. He clutches a small yellow toy tractor but says nothing as specialist nurses monitor his condition. The Russian shell that blasted shrapnel into his belly also badly wounded his parents and grandparents as they tried to flee Mariupol. A victim of Putin’s war and he’s not yet three years old.

In the next bed to Artem lies 15-year-old Masha, also from near Mariupol. Her right leg was amputated after it was torn apart by the blast from a Russian shell last Tuesday.

The very worst of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and what the relentless Russian bombardment has done to the people trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol, can be seen at the Regional Children’s Hospital in the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia.

Hundreds of people have been evacuated here. Their physical wounds are obvious and may, to an extent, heal. The psychological trauma will live with them for ever.

Doctors here and the children’s surviving relatives, asked us to tell their stories, among them Dr Yuri Borzenko, head of the Children’s Hospital. He can’t hide his contempt for what Russia has done.

“I hate Russia,” says Dr Borzenko, without a flicker of emotion on his face. “The girl who lost her leg (Masha) was so traumatised she wouldn’t eat or drink for days. She couldn’t mentally handle what had happened. We had to feed her intravenously.”

“Another boy,” says the doctor, “a six-year-old, with shrapnel in his skull described – without any tears or emotion – watching his mother burn to death in their car after it was hit. Two days later he said ‘dad buy me a new mum, I need someone to walk me to school’.”

What is happening in Mariupol is a humanitarian disaster, even – perhaps – a war crime. An estimated 90% of the city’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed. After last week’s destruction of a theatre where more than 1,000 people were sheltering, reports today that an arts school, with 400 people inside, has also been attacked.

Those who’ve been able to escape Mariupol talk of unimaginable horrors. First-hand accounts of bodies lying in the streets, of homes destroyed. Carrying those memories they put as much physical distance as they can between themselves and what they went through….

At Zaporizhzhia’s Children’s Hospital, I came across one grief-stricken, inconsolable father whose family had been completely torn apart.

His daughter Natasha, who was 26, and his 4-year-old granddaughter Dominica, were killed when a Russian shell landed near the shelter where the whole family was seeking refugee from the bombardment of Mariupol.

“I looked at the ground and there lay my little granddaughter with her head completely torn to pieces,” says Vladimir. “She lay there without a single breath and right next to her was my daughter with her legs fractured, open fractures.”

Dominica – whose pictures her grandfather almost caresses on his phone – was killed instantly. Her mother died from her injuries the next day.

As broken as he is, Vladimir is trying to stay strong for his second daughter, Diana. She was also critically wounded in the blast and was about to undergo emergency surgery.

But he could not hide his pain. “God, why would you bring all this upon me? I was not supposed to bury my children, my lovely girls, I failed to protect you.”

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Cruelty, Fascism

USA Today: Charter Schools Collected $1 Billion in COVID Funds They Did Not Need

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2022 //
9

Craig Harris of USA Today wrote a blistering expose of the money grab by charter schools for federal COVID funds. Harris was previously a reporter for the Arizona Republic who often covered charter school scandals in that state where deregulation has enabled grifters to get rich by opening charter schools. This story is a national scandal. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall, so I urge you to run out and buy the Sunday March 20 USA Today.

The story begins:

America’s charter schools received at least a $1 billion windfall during the pandemic, an unneeded cash infusion for most from a federal program intended to bail out struggling small businesses, USA TODAY has found. 

More than 1,000 of the publicly funded but privately operated schools that educate a fraction of U.S. children jumped at the chance to collect forgivable loans up to $10 million after Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program in March 2020.

The hastily launched program was designed to save small businesses during the pandemic by helping them cover employee salaries and other costs.

While more than 90% of all eligible businesses across the country took the roughly $800 billion inloan allocations, charter schools were among the first to get the money — ahead of mom-and-pop shops and minority-owned companies — during the early days of the crisis when the economy was cratering and many business owners scrambled to get a financial lifeline.

And charter schools were uniquely positioned to get the loans — even though they continually received funding from taxes, just like traditional public schools. But unlike those schools, which educate the vast majority of American children, charters qualified for what would eventually become pots of free money because they are considered a business. 

A USA TODAY investigation, based on public records,found 93%of the charter schools may not have needed the money because they were in states that continued to fund them at the same level as before the pandemic, or at even higher levels in some cases. These schools also had access to federal COVID grants. 

Records show some of the private companies that operate the charter schools used the money to pad savings accounts or, in one case, hand millions of dollars to an investor.

USA TODAY’s investigation is based on publicly available documents from 1,139 charter schools, as well as federal and state agencies, including 37 departments of education that oversee local funding for charter schools.

“It makes me furious because there was absolutely no reason for those (charter) schools to get that money and take it from small businesses,” said Carol Corbett Burris, a critic of charter schools and executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation, an advocacy group in New York City. “They successfully double-dipped….”

Charter school advocates said operators were entitled to the loans, which ranged from $150,746 to $9.8 million,because they are technically private businesses. 

“Funding is always difficult to secure but was even more challenging during the pandemic,”  said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Rees added that charter schools typically receive less public funding than traditional school districts and Congress intended for them to get the money because of “the special nature of these unique public schools.”

Critics have a different view. 

A congresswoman who has monitored the program said that while the schools may have done nothing legally wrong, their decisions to take the money were “terrible.” And one superintendent who leads an inner-city San Diego charter operation said that despite the legality, the behavior was unethical because financially strong charter businesses took money from those truly in need. 

“At the time PPP became available, we had not suffered financially,” said David Sciarretta, superintendent of the Albert Einstein Academies, which has 1,450 students from kindergarten to eighth grade at two San Diego campuses. “I saw PPP as a way to help small businesses, especially those in the service sector…There is a fiscal way to look at it, and there’s a moral and ethical way to look at it.”

While Sciarretta declined to call out specifics schools, USA TODAY found, for example, that at least 14 affiliates of the California-based charter chainKnowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) took a collective $28.4 million in loans and had them forgiven at locations around the U.S.

Its national headquarters in San Francisco, meanwhile, saw its bottom line swell 56% to $75 million during the first year of the pandemic….

The concerns about charter schools have spurred critics to pressure the federal Small Business Administration, which is in charge of forgiving the loans if companies used them to save jobs and cover COVID-related expenses, to claw back the money.

The SBA declined repeated requests for interviews in response to questions about financially solid charter schools having their loans forgiven. 

The agency in a late December email told USA TODAY it was committed to helping businesses reopen and that it had removed hindrances for small businesses to have their loans forgiven.

SBA two months later, following additional questions from USA TODAY, blamed the Trump administration for issues of “fraud, waste and abuse” in the program. Yet, nearly all of the loan forgiveness has happened at SBA during the Biden administration.

California Congresswoman Judy Chu is a member of the House Small Business Committee, and she has sought answers about where the money went and which businesses received loan forgiveness. Shamed by media attention in the early days of the pandemic, the Los Angeles Lakers and the national chain Shake Shack returned their multi-million dollar PPP loans.

Congresswoman Chu said:

It was never the intent of Congress to forgive loans to companies, such as charter schools, that experienced no economic loss.

“It’s terrible,” Chu said about the charter schools. “But nonetheless, it is in the realm of what is permissible.”

Permissible, but not ethical. Charter schools got their ”loans” early on because of their relationships with their banks, but minority-owned businesses waited for months.

The PPP program was a boon to the charter industry, which never lost its state funding, but it was ineffective. Harris quotes a study by the National Bureau of Educational Research which found that the program “the program kept up to three million workers employed an additional year at a cost of up to $258,000 per job retained.”

This is a very powerful, well researched article that raises important questions. if charter schools are “businesses,” how can they call themselves ”public schools?” Public schools were not eligible for PPP funds because they are not businesses. Charter schools qualified for public school funding and for PPP funding. They are both fish and fowl. They did not lose money, like the mom-and -pop stores that had to close their doors. But they eagerly took the money that was supposed to save the jobs of people who lost them and save the businesses on the edge of bankruptcy.

Permissible? Perhaps. Ethical? No.


Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Hypocrisy, Privatization

Statement by Russian Anti-War Committee

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2022 //
70

I just watched a documentary about Mikhail Khodorovsky called Citizen K. It is streaming on Prime Video. He was one of the original oligarchs in Russia, said to be the richest man in Russia, with a fortune of $15 billion. He began to criticize Putin and to speak out for democracy, and no surprise, he was arrested for tax evasion and given a long prison sentence. He was then charged with embezzlement, and his sentence was increased. After 10 years in prison, Putin granted him and others clemency, as a gesture of mercy when opening the Sochi Olympics. Khodorovsky lost his billions, but still has a few hundred million that he was wise enough to hide in places like Ireland. He now lives in London and supports civil society efforts to build a democratic future for Russia.

The following statement was posted on Khodorovsky’s website.

The world is watching as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s war of choice on Ukraine becomes a slaughter. Unable to topple the government in Kyiv promptly, Putin’s forces are now bombarding civilian populations day and night. Humanitarian catastrophe is imminent as electricity and water supplies fail in besieged cities. A million refugees have left and many more are trying to escape. Urgent action is required.

Meanwhile, Putin and his propagandists continue to tell lies about “liberating” Ukraine. Russian TV spews hateful lies about Nazis in Kyiv while the regime blocks social media to prevent Russians from seeing the bloody truth. Ukraine did want liberation—liberation from the grasp of Putin’s dictatorship. They paid a price in blood in 2014 to eject his puppet ruler and move toward Europe and real democracy. This was unacceptable to Putin, who swore to either recapture Ukraine or destroy it if he couldn’t. He is now fulfilling this promise on a raft of spurious pretexts that barely show any effort to disguise his imperialist aims.

The world is not only watching. Sanctions against Russia and Putin’s oligarchs that would have deterred Putin years ago are being applied. Russians are being made aware that Putin’s dictatorship is a dead end for them and the country. Weapons that would have prevented Putin’s invasion are now being sent. It is already too late to save thousands of lives lost in the past week, casualties that are added to the thousands more from the start of Putin’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine in 2014.

It is not enough. It is too late for deterrence when bombs are falling. We know from the horrors of Grozny and Aleppo that Putin has no regard for human life. We know from his track record that he will not stop until he is stopped. NATO, the greatest military alliance in human history, sits on the Western border of Ukraine, a front-row seat to a modern genocide.

There is no gray area here, no room for doubt. Hundreds of international reporters all over Ukraine are documenting atrocities by the hour. Putin’s war is a rare moment of moral clarity, a case of good versus evil rarely seen outside of fables and fantasy novels. No competing ideologies or religions, no disputed claims—nothing but war for the sake of war. There is no NATO treaty obligation to defend Ukraine, it is true, but nor is there any prohibition from doing so.

The West already has Ukrainian blood on its collective hands. In 1994, Ukraine signed away its giant nuclear arsenal in exchange for territorial guarantees by the US and UK (and Russia). Putin’s 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea received international condemnation but no action.

Had the international community rushed to Ukraine’s defense then, the nightmare unfolding today could have been avoided. All the sanctions and weapons shipments happening now could have taken place eight long years ago. Instead, we heard it was too risky to confront Putin, that it could lead to war. Now the war has come regardless, as was inevitable. Success emboldens dictators, a lesson from history that has been ignored.

Even as Putin’s army surrounded Ukraine over the past few months, the West did nothing but issue warnings. Instead of rushing to fortify Ukraine with armaments and showing Putin that this time sanctions would be painful, the free world again waited and watched until Russian tanks were rolling in.

Now we are witnessing the third betrayal of Ukraine, the refusal to intervene when the scope of Putin’s murderous intentions have become clear. Ukraine’s heroic president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has refused to flee Kyiv at great personal risk, has pleaded with the international community to clear the skies over Ukraine. NATO and member nations have refused, on the grounds it would be an escalation. Instead, they will wait until Putin escalates on his own terms, as he always does, while the Ukrainian death count grows.

Now more than ever, being pro-Russian and anti-war means being anti-Putin. Putin can only be toppled by Russians, as his mafia cronies, security apparatus, and ordinary citizens are forced to choose between their own lives and his. Russians do not want this war, or any war, but they must see the truth and act. We believe it can and will happen. But it will not be in time to end the slaughter in Ukraine.

Thrice betrayed and now sacrificed for the West’s sins of appeasement of Putin, Ukraine is a tragedy of Biblical dimensions. We call upon the free world to exercise its vast power and clear moral authority to save innocent lives.

Members of the Russian Anti-War Committee:

  • Mikhail Khodorkovsky, public figure
  • Garry Kasparov, politician, 13th world chess champion
  • Sergey Aleksashenko, economist
  • Yuri Pivovarov, historian, member of Russian Academy of Sciences
  • Yevgeny Kiselyov, journalist
  • Vladimir Kara-Murza, politician, historian
  • Dmitry Gudkov, politician
  • Boris Zimin, entrepreneur
  • Yevgeny Chichvarkin, entrepreneur
  • Viktor Shenderovich, writer
  • Yulia Latynina, writer, journalist
  • Elena Lukyanova, lawyer

Categories Accountability, International

Russia Lies

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2022 //
81

The large theater in the center of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol sheltered large numbers of women and children. Huge signs marked it with the Russian word “CHILDREN” to protect it. The theater was demolished by a bomb. Yesterday President Biden called Putin a “war criminal.” Putin was outraged. He said this insult was “unforgivable.”

The New York Times described the aftermath of the bombing:

Rescuers on Thursday began pulling some survivors from the wreckage of a theater in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol that was struck a day earlier by a Russian attack, according to an adviser to the city’s mayor.

It was not clear how many people survived at the facility, the Drama Theater of Mariupol, which up to 1,000 people had been using as a shelter in recent days, the adviser, Pyotr Andryushchenko, said in a text message.

The recovery efforts were being hampered by continued shelling of the city by Russian forces on Thursday, he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an overnight public address that a Russian aircraft had “purposefully dropped a huge bomb” on the theater as crowds sheltered there. “Our hearts are broken by what Russia is doing to our people, to our Mariupol,” he said.

The New York Times reviewed satellite images showing that the word “children” had been written in Russian in large white letters in front of and behind the theater. The words were written around Saturday.

Videos posted to social media on Wednesday show that the theater had been largely destroyed. Walls on two sides of the building and large parts of the roof had collapsed.

The Russian government denied carrying out the attack, calling the allegations “a lie.”

“Our armed forces don’t bomb cities. Everyone is well aware of this,” Maria V. Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said on Thursday.

Russian forces have besieged Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov, for over a week, cutting off civilians from food, water, electricity and heat. Bombs, missiles and artillery have hit apartment blocks, stores and a hospital complex.

Categories Accountability, Fascism, International, Lies

Good News! World Bank Withdraws Support from For-Profit Bridge International Academies

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2022 //
5

In a blow to privatization of education, the World bank has withdrawn its support for Bridge International Academies. BIA has been opening for-profit schools in African nations, which discourages public support for public schools.

Civil society organizations and teachers’ unions in Africa have warned of the dangers of allowing a for-profit company to take over education in impoverished nations.

Veteran journalist Peg Tyre was one of the first people to call attention to BIA’s ambitions in an article in the New York Times Magazine. She visited BIA schools in Kenya and interviewed its leaders:

Bridge operates 405 schools in Kenya, educating children from preschool through eighth grade, for a fee of between $54 and $126 per year, depending on the location of the school. It was founded in 2007 by May and her husband, Jay Kimmelman, along with a friend, Phil Frei. From early on, the founders’ plans for the world’s poor were audacious. ‘‘An aggressive start-up company that could figure out how to profitably deliver education at a high quality for less than $5 a month could radically disrupt the status quo in education for these 700 million children and ultimately create what could be a billion-dollar new global education company,’’ Kimmelman said in 2014. Just as titans in Silicon Valley were remaking communication and commerce, Bridge founders promised to revolutionize primary-school education. ‘‘It’s the Tesla of education companies,’’ says Whitney Tilson, a Bridge investor and hedge-fund manager in New York who helped found Teach for America and is a vocal supporter of charter schools.

The Bridge concept — low-cost private schools for the world’s poorest children — has galvanized many of the Western investors and Silicon Valley moguls who learn about the project. Bill Gates, the Omidyar Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the World Bank have all invested in the company; Pearson, the multinational textbook-and-assessment company, has done so through a venture-capital fund. Tilson talked about the company to Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund manager of Pershing Square, which ultimately invested $5.8 million through its foundation. By early 2015, Bridge had secured more than $100 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apparently, some of the original board—Gates, CZI, and Tilson—already left the board. The endorsement of the World Bank was important to the credibility of BIA, especially as its efforts to monetize African education expanded. That endorsement helped to neutralize the objections of local organizations that lacked the resources of the investors.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, International

Andy Spears on Privatization in Tennessee

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2022 //
24

Andy Spears is the publisher of the Tennessee Education Report. He writes in the current issue of The Progressive about the well-funded effort to privatize education funding in Tennessee. Republican Governor Bill Lee and the legislature are determined to gut local control and to outsource taxpayer dollars to out-of-state organizations to open charter schools. This drive for privatization ignores the abject failure of the Tennessee Educational Achievement Authority, which burned through $100 million without achieving anything.

Spears writes:

If you are wondering what it looks like when school privatizers are close to total victory, Tennessee is a prime example. Here, the forces that want to take public money and hand it over to private entities are on the verge of completing their conquest.

Tennessee’s current legislative session features a range of attacks on public schools. Some of these would have immediate impacts, while others take a longer-term approach to fully privatizing K-12 education in the state.

First, it is important to understand that groups backing privatization in the form of charter schools and vouchers are among the top spenders when it comes to lobbying state legislators. For example, the American Federation for Children—an organization founded and previously led by the family of Betsy DeVos, a school privatization advocate and former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education—spent $887,500. Another big spender, the Tennessee Charter School Center, spent $732,500.

Based on this year’s full-frontal assault, these investments appear to be paying off. There are three key issues that currently pose the most significant threat to Tennessee’s public schools. They include: a partnership with Hillsdale College, a private fundamentalist Christian college in Michigan, to run fifty or more charter schools; legislation that would create a charter school real estate grab; and school funding reforms that set the stage for a statewide voucher program.

In his State of the State address, Governor Bill Lee restated his commitment to set aside $32 million to help launch new charters in Tennessee and announced the Hillsdale College partnership, which could bring close to fifty Hillsdale-run charter schools into the state.

Beyond the use of public funds to open schools run by a private, Christian college, there is reason to be concerned about the nature of the Hillsdale curriculum. As educator and blogger Peter Greene explained, “[Hillsdale President Larry] Arnn has been a Trump supporter, and the college has fallen right into MAGAland as well. . . . The college uses Trump mailing lists to raise money. They used to sponsor Rush Limbaugh’s show. They get grads placed on the staff of legislators such as Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy.”

Over the past decade, I have consistently referred to charters as part of the privatization movement, a first decisive step towards vouchers. Charter advocates have frequently written to insist that charter schools are “public schools.” They are, because the state law (drafter by charter lobbyists) calls them “public schools.”

But the Tennessee push for charter schools makes clear that they have become a Trojan horse for privatization. Governor Lee is rewriting the school funding formula so “the money follows the child,” a back door path to vouchers, which a state court ruled unconstitutional.

Spears writes:

Potentially millions of dollars worth of real estate assets in local districts across Tennessee could soon be up for grabs at prices below market value. No wonder privatizers tied to the charter industry have spent $8 million lobbying the legislature.

The final element in the push for privatization is being billed as a “reform” of the state’s school funding formula. Governor Lee recently released his plan to revamp how the state directs money to local school districts for public schools. The bottom line, according to Lee, is that the approach is “student-centered” and that funds “follow the child” no matter what. This plan is based on model legislation from the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

This statement, first of all, creates the erroneous impression that charter schools operate as “public” schools. Although called public schools under Tennessee law (as in most states), these schools function with less government oversight and an array of private operations, from real estate management to the sourcing of substitute teachers to overall school management.

Lee has been fighting to redirect public money to private schools since before he was elected governor.

Second, the proposed change to school funding is quite simply the gateway to a full-on voucher scheme. As Tennessee teacher Mike Stein wrote on his personal blog, the final form of funding reform is a workaround for a school voucher law that Lee enacted and was ruled unconstitutional.

Can the privatizers be stopped? Will charters pave the way for vouchers? Will Governor Lee succeed in destroying local control of public schools?

Stay tuned.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Tennessee, Vouchers

Washington State: State Audit Finds Charter Schools Hiring Uncertified Teachers

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2022 //
27

Bill Gates struggled for years to bring charter schools to Washington State, over the opposition of parent groups, teachers, and civil rights organizations. He lost three state referenda, but won the fourth—barely—by blitzing voters with a multimillion dollar campaign that the opponents could not match.

Be careful what you want. First a CREDO report found that the charters did not outperform the much-maligned public schools.

Now a state audit reports that charters in Seattle and Tacoma are breaking the law by hiring uncertified teachers.

Teachers who lacked proper accreditation taught at charter schools in Seattle and Tacoma, in violation of state rules. This was discovered through an audit; State Auditor Pat McCarthy called these findings “unprecedented.”

The state audit found that Summit Sierra and Summit Atlas, schools in Seattle, and Summit Olympus, a school in Tacoma, received nearly $4 million in funding related to the positions, which may now need to be repaid…

The auditor’s office estimated that Summit schools received $3.89 million in state funding more than it should have related to the teaching positions filled by uncertificated staff.

In a formal response to the audit findings, an attorney for Summit Public Schools challenged all of them, and the state’s repayment calculations.

“It is simply not the case that a person is only qualified to teach under Washington law if he or she has a state-issued teacher certificate,” wrote attorney David Stearns.

The auditors, Stearns wrote, failed “to recognize the explicit exception to the teacher certification requirement that applies to charter schools.”

Jessica de Barros, interim executive director of the Washington State Charter School Commission, which authorizes and oversees Summit Public Schools, disagreed.

“All public charter schools are required to employ certificated teachers,” de Barros said. “The Commission supports full compliance with all of the audit recommendations,” including repayment of inappropriately-granted state dollars.

“We have since strengthened our systems to ensure these inadvertent reporting issues will not happen again,” said Kate Gottfredson, spokesperson for Summit Public Schools. “We will work with the [Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction] to develop an appropriate plan to address the findings.”

It is not clear why the spokesperson for the charter chain thought the problem was a “reporting issue,” not a breaking-the-law issue.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers, Washington State

Learn About UnKoch My Campus

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2022 //
15

The Koch Foundation has made gifts to over 300 institutions of higher education. These gifts are restricted, given to create an “institute” or “center” where libertarian ideas can be promoted on campus. In one such center, a speaker was invited to lecture on “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.”

Universities should be open fora where different ideas can be debated, but it’s absurd to have a center devoted to only one point of view.

Fortunately a group called UnKoch My Campus has made a mission of exposing Koch money and its purposes.

I received this message recently:

At the beginning of February, Brown University faculty members voted to postpone the creation of a new Koch-funded center, the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). This push could not have happened without grassroots organizing efforts spearheaded by Students Against Koch Influence (SAKI). The faculty now intends to adopt a more robust gift and grant acceptance policy ahead of the next vote on the PPE center.

With growing awareness of the ways in which Charles Koch buys influence over hiring, research, and curriculum in higher education to achieve these goals, a call to protect against such donor interference in academia is growing. We built power with SAKI students to ensure we enacted a cohesive strategy to employ a rigorous pressure campaign at Brown University. We’ve also provided the resources to take campaigns like this to the next level, like our Model Funding Policies for higher ed institutions.

The move to kick Koch-funded research programs off of campuses across the nation is already underway and we’re hot on the Koch network’s trail. Join us for our national network call on Tuesday, March 15th at 5 pm EST. Representatives from SAKI will join us to discuss organizing tactics they used and how they plan to adopt a more robust gift and grant acceptance policy at their university. You are not going to want to miss this call.

Categories Accountability, Dark Money, Education Industry, Higher Education, Koch Brothers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »